The recent discovery of two Latin books that once belonged to the Quiney family of Stratford-upon-Avon expands our understanding of Shakespeare's grammar school education and of the social, material, and learned networks that operated in his hometown. One of these books, the Apophthegmata of Erasmus, belonged to Shakespeare's friend and neighbour, Richard Quiney, while the other, a commentary on Aristotelian logic, was owned by a different Richard Quiney, who was ...

Although a small Warwickshire market town, Stratford-upon-Avon has a remarkable number and variety of historic buildings. The medieval street plan survives, with most of the streets still known by the same names. Over the past 250 years, tourism has become a major activity because of the town’s associations with William Shakespeare, and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre on the riverside. Many listed buildings are located along the Historic Spine, which runs from Shakespeare’s Birthplace throug...

There is no doubting Shakespeare's literary genius, immortalised in his published work. However, statements along these lines are frequently followed by laments of how little is known about this life. This is true if we wish to know about Shakespeare's movements on even a month-by-month basis, or about his working practices and relationships with his theatrical fellows. However, too great an emphasis on this dearth of material not only leads to ill-informed comment that this is somehow 'su...

The extraordinary true story of the 'Red Queen'. Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life, marrying four times and enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs. Margaret's royal blood placed her on the fringes of the Lancastrian royal dynasty. After divorcing her first husband at the age of ten, she married the king's h...

Elizabeth Woodville is a historical character whose life no novelist would ever have dared invent. She has been portrayed as an enchantress, as an unprincipled advancer of her family's fortunes and a plucky but pitiful queen in Shakespeare's histories. She has been alternatively championed and vilified by her contemporaries and five centuries of historians, dramatists and novelists, but what was she really like?In this revealing account of Elizabeth's life...

In 1464, the most eligible bachelor in England, Edward IV, stunned the nation by revealing his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, a beautiful, impoverished widow whose father and brother Edward himself had once ridiculed as upstarts. Edward's controversial match brought his queen's large family to court and into the thick of the Wars of the Roses.This is the story of the family whose fates would be inextricably intertwined with the fall of the Plantagenets and...

Richard III is a paradox - the most hated of English kings, yet the most beloved, a deeply pious man, yet materialistic to the point of obsession, puritan, yet the father of at least two illegitimate children. This new biography concentrates on the much neglected early part of Richards life - from his birth in 1452 as a cadet of the House of York to his marriage to the beautiful Anne Neville - and shows how his experiences as the son of an ambitious duke, a prisoner of war, an exile, his k...

Richard III is accused of murdering his nephews (the 'Princes in the Tower') in order to usurp the throne of England. Since Tudor times he has been painted as the 'black legend,' the murderous uncle. However, the truth is much more complicated and interesting. Rather than looking at all the killings Richard III did not commit, this book focuses on the one execution for which we know that he was responsible.On Friday 13 June 1483, William, Lord Hastings was hustled ...

Warwick the Kingmaker, the Earl of Warwick & Salisbury whose wealth and power was so great that he could effectively decide who would rule England during the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), had six sisters: Joan, Cecily, Alice, Eleanor, Katherine and Margaret. They all married powerful noblemen who fought on opposing sides during this turbulent period.The Kingmaker's Sisters examines the role that they played in late fifteenth-century England, as wives, mot...

Samuel Pepyss London was a turbulent, boisterous city, enduring the strains caused by foreign wars, the Great Plague and the Great Fire, yet growing and prospering. The Restoration in 1660 brought the reopening of the theatres, with women appearing on the stage for the first time, and the period saw the development of English opera and the first public concerts. Pepys lived through a time of change in a city of contrasts, which maintained a sophisticated cultural scene, yet was a focus for...

Adam Nicolson tells the story of England through the history of fourteen gentry families – from the 15th century to the present day. This sparkling work of history reads like a real-life Downton Abbey, as the loves, hatreds and many times of grief of his chosen cast illuminate the grand events of history.We may well be ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, but for generations England was a country dominated by its middling families, rooted on their land, in their locality, with a healthy inte...

In 1455 John Howard was an untitled and relatively obscure Suffolk gentleman. Thirty years later, at the time of his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field, he was Earl Marshal, Duke of Norfolk, Lord Admiral and a very rich man (and his direct descendant is Duke of Norfolk today). How had Howard attained these elevations? Through his service to the House of York, and in particular to King Richard III during the setting aside of Edward V.John Ashdown-Hill examines wh...